Dell and Citrix: Better Together for Desktop Virtualization with XenDesktop 7

This week Citrix announced that the newest version of their flagship desktop virtualization product, Citrix XenDesktop 7, has been released for web download. Customers who are current on their Citrix Subscription Advantage can immediately download XenDesktop 7 and also XenApp 6.5 Feature Pack 2 from their website.

At Citrix Synergy in May, we announced the availability of tested reference architectures for DVS Enterprise, the Dell enterprise-grade desktop virtualization solution delivering all of the benefits of Citrix XenDesktop 7. In fact, Dell won the “Best of Synergy 2013” award for virtualization for a new solution using local integrated storage that cuts the cost of VDI infrastructure in half – less than $200 per user for infrastructure.

So, what’s the big deal about Citrix XenDesktop 7? In a recent blog post we talked about how BYOD, management costs and graphic-intensive workloads have emerged as critical aspects of desktop virtualization deployments. XenDesktop 7, in conjunction with pre-configured and tested Dell infrastructure stacks and Dell Wyse end points, satisfy these requirements and helps simplify the deployment and ongoing operations for a virtualized desktop environment. The solution makes this possible through an optimized and integrated infrastructure stack, industry-leading zero and thin clients designed especially for Citrix, new system management tools, and the accommodation of specific workloads around high-end graphics (with NVIDIA® K1/K2 graphics cards) and unified communications (Lync® support). Dell's close partnership with Citrix helps ensure that our joint engineering and development efforts are synchronized, meaning that customers gain the benefits of an efficient and tested solution in coordination with every Citrix release.

We’ve got a number of exciting developments with Citrix and desktop virtualization/cloud client computing solutions coming over the next few months, so be sure to stay tuned to Direct2Dell to keep up with the latest developments.